Toward Identifying Our Selves

Some kind of serendipity going on here - I keep picking books off my shelf that seem to address things I read in the O posts (online ex-member's group). This time it was Circle of Stones, Woman’s Journey To Herself by Judith Duerk. In it she recounts a dream by a woman in one of her workshops. “I am standing on a large map, on the paper itself, somewhere in upstate New York where my parents come from. Others are with me on one of the thick red lines that are the superhighways on the map. We go back and forth...back and forth...it is pointless and endless. Finally I leave the red-line superhighway. I go to a faint little dotted line, not very clearly marked on the map---hardly more than a footpath really.

The map shows only the beginning of the road, not where it will lead. It is scary because it is so narrow and winding, not clearly marked. I worry that I should have done the approved thing and stayed on the big road with all the others. But I see that here I am closer to the trees, which I have loved all my life and are very important to me.”

This is in a chapter where Judith addresses the alienation that women feel in the dehumanization of mass culture, mass production, mass conflict - when she has bought into the pressure-filled production- oriented life. She has learned to brush her feelings aside, doing what does not nourish her - seeking to be dutiful, moral, caring, giving, helpful, PRODUCTIVE, and loving... at all times...to all others.

What if a woman allowed herself to listen once again to her own sensitivities? To listen to the ways in which she is unhappy, allowed herself to trust what her tears are trying to tell her - "No…not this way...no…no...slow down, rest."

So claim the anger, scream out at the insanity of those speeding cars on the freeway, endlessly rushing to do, become, compete, produce, be effective, multi-task - a form of mental illness foisted on us by a animus-dominant culture. Throw off the guilt and fear of just "being", the power of the feminine where we embrace the difference of seeing life differently from those around us. Let the soft, vulnerable, passive yin nature flow as we feel sadness, depression, all meant to guide us to our Self and it's understanding of what is of value to us.

My part of the book that touched me was the pointing out of the search of the Mother in all of my life through people, circumstances, whatever. My mother died when I was 1 1/2 years old and I have struggled with feelings of loss, abandonment etc. Sinking into those feelings at times - wallowing on the pity-potty I call it - helps!

PS: Some afterthoughts, in the best sense of the word, passive denotes yielding, patient, like a tree bending in the wind but firmly rooted in it’s essence. I think this has been seen as being submissive, exerting no influence, but as Gandhi overcame by refusing to comply with the edicts of the powers that be, he won.

He DID speak out and demonstrate, to educate his fellow citizens about the injustices and the possibility of change. He did not feel powerless so had no need to do other than stand in his truth without anger or any other effort to control the outcome. Neither did he fall into the pathology of victimization as being without recourse to affect his own or others lives. I think if we define for ourselves what is good and right for all concerned as individuals, whether it embodies femininity or masculinity, we can take any warring or aggressive factor out--- for the better.

Love, Maxine

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